Tag Archives: Smallville

So I took a bit of a break from the blog to finish watching the second season of Supernatural. 🙂 We finished it last night, and will probably start watching the 3rd season today, and I have to say that I’m impressed. I knew Sam was going to die and that Dean would do a deal at the crossroads to bring him back, but I didn’t know that their dad would put in an appearance! That was a goose-flesh moment if there ever was one! Very cool! And now that the Yellow-Eyed demon is dead it’ll be interesting to see what the brothers have got to face in the 3rd season, though with all the demons that were released (an awesome moment that took me back to Smallville and the release of the Phantoms from the Phantom Zone) I’m sure they’ll have their work cut out for them. 🙂

We also watched the movie-adaptation of Jose Saramago’s Blindness on the weekend… The only thing that spoiled an otherwise excellent movie was the motivation of Julianne Moore’s character – being the only person who can see among hundreds who can’t, she decides that she’ll let herself (and the women who joined her) be subjected to rape for food. Huh?! Maybe someone can explain this to me, but putting myself in that position just wouldn’t be something I would want to do. You have such a huge advantage over everyone else, and you still want to go ahead and punish yourself like that? For what? Anyway. The rest of the movie was great, and I will recommend it, but I will also be reading the book at some time. 🙂

I am now about 400 pages into Stephen King’s Under the Dome, and it’s incredible so far! 🙂 The King is definitely pulling out all the stops here, and I’ve been getting that same epic-vibe from Dome that I got from The Stand, even though The Stand was a cross-country kind of novel and Dome is set in one town. The characters are amazing, the events awesome (and terrifying), and it’s really shaping up to be a shit-your-pants ride. 🙂

On to the Wheel of Time – I’m really digging the titles for Book 13 and 14! 🙂 Towers of Midnight is such an awesome penultimate-book-in-the-series title, don’t you think? I totally agree with those that have covered it so far that we might see a resolution to the Seanchan plot, though when you think about the outrigger novels that RJ had planned, maybe not. 🙂 But at least we can hope for Tuon and Rand to finally meet and cement the Seanchan as allies of Rand in The Last Battle. And the last book – A Memory of Light. Wonderful! 🙂 Thanks TOR, Harriet, Brandon! 🙂

Now for a blogger-birthday: I completely missed Mark Chitty’s BDay! (Sorry Mark!) I hope you had an incredible day, got plenty of awesome books to read, and will have another incredible year! 🙂 All the best!

David will also be bringing me the entire first season of Legend of the Seeker today, so I’ll have a review of Season 1 for you soon. 🙂 I have to say, I’m not particularly looking forward to it, but since I am a fan of Terry Goodkind’d work, I’m sort of honour-bound to at least give it a go. (Wasn’t impressed with what I’ve seen so far, but I promise to be more optimistic!)

So, I’m also busybusybusy relocating the blog. 🙂 The launch will happen as soon as I’ve finished Under the Dome (that’ll be the first review), and I’ll make an announcement here with a link to the new blog. 🙂 This blog will still be around (as will all the posts on it), and David and I will still be the review-team, but I’ll be using this blog for my writing-stuff and any non-SFF stuff that I want to chat about. 🙂
And I have to say, so far, Blogger is pretty cool.

What’ll I have coming up in the next few weeks? Well, hard to say. 🙂 I’m hoping to have finished All Yesterday’s Tomorrows, and then I’ll be really sinking in to Brent Weeks’ work. 🙂 I’m also itching to give Glenda Larke a go, and then get my re-read of Steven Erikson done so that I can read Dust of Dreams. I’m also hoping to get an ARC of The Other Lands (available to order now!), and then there’ll be a host of indie-published books that I’ll be reviewing (have to get those done!). Will everything work according to plan? Probably not! 🙂

Anyway, that’s me for now – will be back with another post tomorrow. 🙂

We finished watching (and in some cases, re-watching) the first 6 Seasons of the excellent TV show, Smallville, last night, and I’ve been wanting to do a review of it for a while now. I was even considering taking a day off work, plopping myself on the couch with with girlfriend, and having a Smallville Day (but couch-sitting doesn’t put money in my pocket, so.). But we got to it, watched ‘Phantom’ last night, and then sat talking about the news we had heard concerning Series 7 and 8.

First things first, here in SA we haven’t even received the 7th Series yet, so you understand why we’re behind. 🙂

Okay. As far as a re-imagining of Superman’s myth goes, Smallville does an excellent job. I’ve been reading the comics since I was a wee one, so I’m well-versed in that side (the most important, in my opinion) of the Superman legend; I’m a great fan of the comics, and the way the characters are represented there, but I’m also a fan of Smallville. (Just wanted to get that out of the way) Looking back at the introductions of major characters such as Lois Lane, the Brain Interactive Construct (Braniac), Green Arrow, Cyborg and Impulse, I can understand why they came in the way they did. Granted, it doesn’t follow the legend, but I’ve looked at it this way: when Marvel Comics brought out titles such as Spider-man Unlimited, they re-imagined the webhead for today’s readers, and pulled it off. Smallville wouldn’t have worked if they had set it in the late-thirties, say, or in the early eighties – we’ve seen both versions of the Superman legend (the thirties in the early cartoons and the eighties in the movies with Christopher Reeve) and we needed something new. This is one of the areas at which Smallville excels – giving us a young Clark Kent who uses a cellphone instead of a telephone booth, who’s afraid of heights, who’s heat vision goes haywire when he’s… umm, well, suddenly in the mood, for want of a better term that I won’t use here. 🙂 Smallville’s creators did this brilliantly, and while I will never take there version of Clark’s formative years as (nod to George Lucas here) canon, I will religiously watch Smallville because Superman’s legend is now accesible to everyone in our Age of Information. 🙂

Next, characters: Bringing in Lionel Luther was a stroke of genius! The man is a brilliant foil to Lex, and his (seeming) converstion to the light side was an excellent way of getting Clark to look more closely at his definition of good and evil. Now, I know that Lionel dies (and who kills him) but this still doesn’t detract from his character; John Glover is a brilliant actor, and brought Lionel to brilliant life. 🙂

Lana, on the other hand, irritated me to almost past any point of endurence! In the six seasons that led up to her ‘death’, she was the same character, going in circles, reacting the same way, saying the same things. Now, her parts were written, and Kristen Kreuk was just the actor bringing Lana Lang to life, but come on, how many times did she get pissed off with everyone for not being truthfull with her when she wasn’t being truthfull? Myriad events ellicited the same responses from her, and in the end, it became too much – my girlfriend and I would only really pay attention to Lana if Clark or Lex or Chloe or Lionel were in the scenes with her; if not, we had really had our fill and couldn’t care less. She never evolved as a character. I’m glad that she’s out of the show, and now that Lois and Clark are sitting across from each other in the Daily Planet, well, suffice it to say that this is the Smallville I’ve been waiting to watch! 🙂

Clark, too, got a bit irritating, especially every time he blamed himself for everything that was going wrong in Smallville, whether it was meteor-freak attacks, Lex’s machinations, Zod, etc. But other than that, Tom Welling has brought everything to Smallville that make Clark Kent and Superman such iconic characters – this Clark is excellent, but c’mon, fly already!! 🙂

Chloe – amazing, deep character, especially considering the fact that she’s not a character from the comics, and my favourite to hook up with Clark (even though we know what’s coming with Lois).

Lois – Lois is wonderful – her evolution into the cynical, brilliant reporter is amazing to behold, and every scene she has, especially with Clark, is legendary. 🙂

Pete Ross – I liked him, I wish he could have done more in the series, but being Clark’s best buddy and knowing his secret took a lot of wind out of his sails, and I completely understand why he left the show (but I’m glad he’s coming back!)

Jonathan and Martha Kent – no Ma and Pa Kent here! These two were wonderful! Mr Kent and Clark together were always funny, touching, deep, tense – whatever happened, they brought some great moments to TV, and Mrs Kent was as steadfast as ever, a wonderful take on the character. 🙂

The Justice League! Man, I couldn’t have been happier when they appeared! Bart Allen was done brilliantly, exactly as impulsive as his comics-counterpart (though now that the comics-Bart is dead, we’ll have to see where they take him as a character). Green Arrow was awesome, as always; Oliver Queen is the perfect guy to teach Clark about leadership and being a hero. Cyborg should have gotten more time!! We don’t know enough about him, especially considering that he’s a team member of the Teen Titans, but he’s still loaded with awesomeness. And the episode Justice? I was cheering, laughing, swearing, hell, would have jumped on the couch if I didn’t know I would hit my head on the cealing! 🙂 Awesome, awesome episode! 🙂

All in all, Smallville is a brilliant show, and with the developments on the way (Doomsday, the Legion, Maxima!) the show can only get better! I’m a huge fan and will always be! But c’mon, give Clark his suit already! He’s in Metropolis, with Lois, at the Daily Planet!! 🙂

I’m a winner again! 🙂 (Pumping my fist in the air, s’cuse me for a bit) 🙂 Paul over at Blood of the Muse, a great SFF (and much more) blog site, btw, let me know today that I’ve won a signed copy of Greg Bear’s Quantico! 🙂 I cannot wait to show that off here, and then show it off to all my sf-reading buddies – people will be contemplating murder, let me tell you. 🙂

Also, I’ve got yet another Star Wars author coming up for a interview – no, I’m not saying anything about who it is, but when I’ve got the interview done and posted, you all will be the first (well, not the first, the second) to see it. 🙂

And my girlfriend and I will be finishing Smallville Season 6 tonight, so I’ll be posting my review of Seasons 1 through 6 tomorrow (or thereabouts), and it’ll be interesting to see what my thoughts are on Smallville (for me, at least). 🙂

And lastly, I’m half-way with Star Wars Coruscant Nights Jedi Twilight and enjoying it immensely, so I’ll have that review up as soon as I’m done with it. 🙂

M.D. Thalmann, a novelist and freelance journalist with an affinity for satire and science fiction, lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife, children, and ornery cats, reads too much and sleeps too little.